Spring football league a failed dream of many, but it may work

Dreamers dream for a living. Sometimes it works. But when your reveries produce thoughts of starting up a new professional football league, dreams tend to become delusional and eventually morph into cold-sweat-uh-oh-I’m-going-broke nightmares.

Jaime Cuadra is one such dreamer. And he fully intends to act on it and live it.

Cuadra, 52, is all San Diego. He came to this country from Nicaragua as a baby, attended El Cajon Valley High and received two degrees from USD. From an office downtown, he serves as chief financial officer for Umani Seafood, which owns two bluefin tuna farms, one near Ensenada in Baja and one in Croatia.

Now how one goes from counting tuna profits to starting up a new spring football league beats me, but as Cuadra puts it: “I’m an accountant by education and an entrepreneur by nature.”

As history explains, those who have tried to start up football leagues in a country dominated by the NFL have failed, including the USFL, which had Donald Trump’s ego and money behind it, the ego eventually leading to its downfall. Cuadra has acquired the USFL brand, and as its president and CEO hopes to have an eight-team league (14 games, two playoffs games and a championship) start up by next spring in non-NFL cities. The new USFL will be headquartered here.

Cuadra is dreaming, but he has the right attitude and plan, and he’s enlisted as a consultant Jim Steeg, the former Chargers COO, who for 34 years served the NFL as the man in complete charge of Super Bowls and special events. Smart move. There aren’t many people who know professional football’s insides better than Jim Steeg.

“I like the idea a lot,” Steeg says. “I haven’t talked to anyone who thinks the idea sucks. If you truly believe a triple-A spring football league has merit, this is the way to go. It’s not meant to compete with the NFL. It will give players the opportunity to develop. There are 3,000 football players and only 1,800 roster spots in the NFL. Particularly with the NFL’s new CBA, I think this kind of thing has a different place.”

Steeg must like the idea, because, “I’m not getting paid.” At least not yet.

The key to what he has to say is that, first and foremost, any new league must stay out of direct competition with the NFL. The original USFL did it the wrong way, going after high-priced players and eventually paying the price. How many times have league-starters said they don’t plan on competing with the NFL and then go off the deep end?

“The USFL and UFL did the same thing — they weren’t fiscally responsible,” Cuadra says. “The XFL went totally gimmicky. It’s not going to work with purists. NFL Europe was a great idea, but costly. We can see the mistakes that have been made and try to avoid them.

“We’re going to play in the spring when fans are dying for football. We’re going to take players who didn’t quite make it to the NFL and develop them — we’re talking anywhere from 1,000 to 1,800 kids and giving them a living wage, $3,000-to-$3,500 per game, and give them unfettered access to the NFL. They will be paid by the league, to keep things under control.”